Legal: The Blues Brothers Teach Us about the First Amendment

Thursday

Mar 14, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 14, 2013 at 2:21 PM

Illinois Nazis are a despicable breed. Jake Blues hates them. He famously said so, which cued his brother Elwood to drive their car with all the fury of a raging bull through the center of a Nazi demonstration. And they did it to great comic effect. A real court case inspired the scene. In 1977 Chicago refused to let Nazis rally in a city park. So they opted for the nearby Village of Skokie which was home to 4000 holocaust survivors. These Nazis were truly worthy of their swastikas. Skokie also rejected them. Then the Nazis sued, arguing that it was their First Amendment right. They won. Don’t yell fire in a crowded theatre. Don’t say things that will incite a riot. A swastika, however, an inflammatory symbol of hate and bigotry, can be brandished in the faces of those who are tortured by its image. Jake hates Nazis, presumably, because they hate, because they are exuberant in their hatred, and because that exuberance compels them to express their views publicly in a way that disrupts communities. Jake hates Nazis because they are hypocrites. They use the First Amendment to exercise rights that they themselves would deny others.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of all expression by protecting the most ignorant and awful forms of it. That is its wisdom. But there are limitations. Risk of physical injury justifies suppressing speech or other expressive conduct. The time, place and manner of expression are subject to government regulation. Don’t ruin someone’s reputation. The First Amendment does not shield a person from liability for defamation. Though public figures are expected to suffer more slings and arrows than the rest of us. And our free press is given the leeway to launch them.

It is the First Amendment, not the second or third. Its prominence in the Bill of Rights should tell us something. Free expression is a uniquely American right. We did not inherit it from English law. The right to criticize our government or to say terribly unpopular things developed in response to English tyranny. Exercising this right, therefore, takes the same brand of courage possessed by our rebel forefathers. The Skokie holocaust survivors had it. They planned to confront the Nazis with a demonstration of their own; one using images of the holocaust so horrible that a deafening silence surely would have pervaded the streets and overwhelmed any pathetic attempt to promote white race superiority. But this silence never came. The Nazis, cowards that they were, rallied in Chicago. Their bluff had been called.

Not everyone can be so courageous. For those of us who can, it's our mission to speak out for the voiceless. In that moment we reveal what it means to be American. Act boldly like the Blues Brothers to express yourselves for the benefit of others. They were on a mission from God to save an orphanage. Our mission as Americans is not so different, as it may take divine intervention to preserve our way of life for future generations. Use whatever methods are available to speak out. The Blues Brothers apparently prefer to use their car. Hopefully we can find less dangerous but equally effective ones.

The scene described above is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0